Claimed by Shadow Page 0,21
on the upper floors, so electricity worked okay except for the occasional splutter. And real torches would have been hard to get past the fire codes.
I stopped and glared at the mage, who was looking around like he expected something to jump him at any moment. It would really be nice if the universe could stop throwing creatures out of fables, myths and nightmares at me. "There's no such thing as gargoyles!" I said just as two of the little monsters pulled a cart out of the door and began tugging it down the hallway. The floor, painted to look like weathered stone, was carpeted with a narrow strip of old maroon plush barely two feet wide that ran down the middle. It didn't do much decorwise, and it threatened to tip the cart over whenever one of the wheels encountered it. "It's just a name for fancy rainspouts," I insisted, even as my eyes told me otherwise. "Everyone knows that.”
"How can you have lived so long in our world and know so little?" Pritkin demanded. "You must have seen stranger things. You grew up at a vampire's court!”
By this time, the servers had navigated the corridor and paused in front of an elevator. One of them pressed the call button with the tip of a pointed tail. He had the face of a dog and a bat's body, while his companion was covered in grayish scales and was drooling around a two-foot-long tongue. "The strangest thing about our cook in Philly," I told Pritkin dazedly, "was that he was almost deaf from years of blasting heavy metal. But he was human. Well," I amended after a moment, "until that time Tony promised an important visitor fettuccine Alfredo, only the cook somehow heard bacon, lettuce and tomato… Anyway, shouldn't they be off decorating a cathedral somewhere?”
“The creatures on medieval cathedrals aren't gargoyles; they're grotesques," he replied pedantically, while we moved in the direction of the cart.
"Stop it! You know what I mean! Why are they here?"
"Illegal aliens," he said shortly. "Cheap labor." I stared at him suspiciously, but if the mage had a sense of humor, I'd yet to see any sign of it. "Aliens? From where?”
"From Faerie," he replied in the clipped tones he uses when annoyed. That seems to be most of the time, at least around me. "They have been coming into our world for centuries. But the numbers have greatly increased recently because the Light Fey have been making things difficult for the Dark-among whom the creatures we call gargoyles are numbered. The mages who handle Fey affairs have been complaining about the number of unauthorized arrivals we've been getting as a result.”
"So they come here and do room service?" The elevator came and the gargoyles tugged their laden cart onto it, ignoring the loitering humans. "They were traditionally employed as guardians for temples in the ancient world and for magical edifices in later centuries. But advances in warding have lessened the call for that kind of thing. Unlike the Light Fey, they can't pass for human, so their entrance is restricted." He scowled. "Their legal entrance," he amended.
"I guess around here, they just kind of blend in with the ambiance," I said, but Pritkin wasn't listening. He had crouched and was looking around a corner as warily as if he expected to find an army on the other side.
"Stay here," he ordered. "I'm going to check out the area. When I return, we will have that talk you promised, or the next time we meet won't be so pleasant.”
"Pleasant? What weird definition of that word are you-" I stopped because he'd left, melting around the corner and into the shadows like a character in a video game. The guy was obviously cracked, but I had promised to hear him out. And if there was any chance of cutting a deal to get him and his Circle off my back, I wanted it.
I didn't think that going back to the kitchen was a good idea, so I hung out in the hallway. The suits of armor were interspersed with ugly tapestries, with the closest showing a Cyclops eating his way through a human army, a soldier in each hand and an arm dangling out of his bloody mouth. I decided to concentrate on the armor.
That turned out to be more fun than I'd expected. The suits stood on individual wood platforms bearing brass plaques, each of which had a Latin inscription. I'd had to learn Latin